A work center is a location in production where an operation is performed. A work center can be a machine, a department, a specific operator, or an operator group.
Consider how you define labor classes. If you set up machines as work centers, you register the operators as labor classes. The definition of work centers depends on how your production is designed and whether a machine or manual labor controls production.
The information you enter for work centers is used when you work with operations, shop orders, MS, MRP, and cost estimates. The work center can be an active work center or a planning resource. A work center that is a planning resource is used by resource planning. The work center's usage also controls its units of measure. An active work center uses the measure hours, while a planning resource can use any measurement unit.
Note: When a site is defined for finite planning, you cannot define external work centers as infinite. If you have infinite capacity at external work centers, you must define the capacity to be so high that no limitations are reached.
You can delete a work center if you no longer plan to use it. Before deleting a work center, be sure that it meets the following requirements: